Etherboot 4.2.3

Binaries are no longer provided for the ROMs. They take up a significant
amount of space and also it's best if users decide the configuration
they want for themselves. You need gcc to recompile the ROMs.

This release assumes that your GNU as is recent enough to cope with
.code16, .code32, data16 and data32 pseudo-ops. If not, uncomment the
AS_PSEUDOS line in the Makefile to use a preassembled start32.o. But note
that this object file is compiled with all ANSIESC and FLOPPY defined
and is larger than necessary in some cases.

You can choose either to use the preassembled binaries for the loader
headers or to use as86 (only ELKS version suitable) or nasm. Unless you
need to change the source, the preassembled binaries suffice. See the
symbol AS86 in the Makefile.

The code for making PnP ROMs requires that the vendor and device IDs be
set in the ROM header. This is done with the -p option of makerom. For
some ROMs, the vendor and device IDs are known but where the ROM is
generic, e.g. NE2000 PCI, you may have to edit the Makefile to set
the IDs.

PNP header extension BIOSes are only made for PCI NICs, and legacy header
extension BIOSes for others.

Notwithstanding this, if you are having trouble with PnP ROMs even with
your BIOS, it may be worth configuring the make process to make legacy
ROMs for your NIC. This is done by using rloader and rzloader instead
of prloader and przloader respectively in the Makefile rules.

If you are having problems with the Compex RL2000 PCI NIC, check the
Makefile for the symbol COMPEX_RL2000_FIX.

The Tulip driver is incomplete. It needs coders to add the model specific
initialisations. The Tulip family of NICs is not a single NIC or even a
tree of upward compatible NICs but many slightly different cards. Each
type of card requires specific handling. Also autonegotiation for media
type and speed is needed. Please step in if you can help.

There is an engineering fault in old versions of the ASICs on the
3c905b affecting ROMs larger than 8kB. Please read the release
notes in src/3c905b.txt for instructions to work around this
fault. The diagnostic program written by Donald Becker referred to at
http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex-develop.html has a
little advertised facility to program the EEPROM if linked with libflash.

Code for ASK_BOOT option has changed slightly to make the prompts and
answers more customisable. Beware, N means Network boot and not No to
network boot.

The mknbi-* tools from the Netboot distribution have been updated to
version 0.8.1.
